I tried using a personal calendar as well as the Microsoft exchange calendar that I have but all my appointments doubled up and caused me confusion. So I decided to just use the exchange calendar which is fine if I put an appointment on my laptop as there's an option to keep it private if it's personal so my boss doesn't see it. But if I enter an appointment on my iPad or iPhone I can't work out how to make it private .. Does anybody know?

You can have multiple calendars, so you can have a work calendar and a home calendar and you can choose which to show......to do this use the calendars button at the top left of the calendar app.

Hello, i am also interested in the possibility to select Private option in iPad calendar the same way as it is possible in MS Outlook. But it looks like that this option is not available for iPad.
Using the option with 2 calendars is not the same because in this case you do not see your private appointment in the Outlook calendar.

Just use gcal simple as that as long as you have access to the net it is privAte